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Page 16
"What's got to be eaten?" Burns demanded, unhappily.
"Punch, and ices--and little cakes, I believe. Cheer up, man, you don't
have to eat 'em, if you don't want to."
"Thanks for that. I'll remember it of you when greater favours have been
forgotten. Martha has her eye on me--I must go. I'll get even with Martha
for this, some time." And the guest of honour, stuffing his handkerchief
out of sight and thrusting his coppery, thick locks back from his
martyred brow, obeyed the summons.
The next time Macauley caught sight of him, he was assiduously supplying
a row of elderly ladies with ices and little cakes, and smiling at them
most engagingly. They were looking up at him with that grateful
expression which many elderly ladies unconsciously assume when a handsome
and robust young man devotes himself to them. Burns found this task least
trying of all his duties during that long evening, for one of the row
reminded him of his own mother, to whom he was a devoted son, and for her
sake he would give all aging women of his best. Something about this
little group of unattended guests, all living more or less lonely lives,
as he well knew them in their homes, touched his warm heart, and he
lingered with them to the neglect of younger and fairer faces, until his
host, again at his elbow, in a strenuous whisper admonished him:
"For heaven's sake, Red, don't waste any more of that rare sweetness on
the desert air. Go and lavish your Beau Brummel gallantry on the wives
of our leading citizens. Those new Winterbournes have sackfuls of
money--and a chronic invalid or two always in the family, I'm told. A
little attention there--"
"Clear out," Burns retorted shortly, and deliberately sat down beside the
little, white-haired old lady who reminded him of his mother. As he had
been standing before, this small act was significant, and Macauley, with
a comprehending chuckle, moved away again.
"Might have known that wouldn't work," he assured himself. He strolled
over to Ellen, and when, after some time, he succeeded in getting her
for a moment to himself, he put an interested question.
"What do you think of your husband as a society man? A howling success,
eh? He's been sitting for one quarter of an hour by the side of old Mrs.
Gillis. And a whole roomful of devoted patients, past and future, looking
daggers at him because he ignores them. How's that for business policy,
eh? Can't you bring him to his senses?"
"Are you sure they're looking daggers? I passed Mrs. Gillis and Red just
now, and thought they made a delightful pair. As for business policy,
Jim,--a man who would be good to an old lady would be good to a young
one. Isn't that the natural inference,--if you must think about business
at all at such an affair. I prefer not to think about it at all."
"You may not be thinking about it, but you're capturing friends, right
and left. I've been watching you, and knew by the expression on the faces
of those you were talking to that you were gathering them in and nailing
them fast. How does a woman like you do it?--that's what I'd like to
know!"
"Go and do your duty like a man, Jimmy. Flattering the members of your
own family is not a part of it." Dismissing him with a smile which made
him more than ever eager for her company, she turned away, to devote
herself, as her husband was doing, to the least attractive of the guests.
The evening wore away at last, and at a reasonably early hour the hosts
were free. The last fellow citizen had barely delivered his parting
speech and taken himself off when Red Pepper Burns turned a handspring
in the middle of the deserted room, and came up grinning like a fiend.
"Good-bye--good-bye--'tis a word I love to speak," he warbled, and
seizing his wife kissed her ardently on either cheek.
"Hear--hear!" applauded James Macauley, returning from the hall in time
to see this expression of joy. "May we all follow your excellent
example?"
"You may not." Red Pepper frowned fiercely at Mr. Macauley, approaching
with mischievous intent. "Keep off!"
"She's my sister-in-law," defended Macauley, continuing to draw near, and
smiling broadly.
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